ESPN+ acquires Eredivisie, A-League and Chinese Super League rights

Just in time for the new Eredivisie season, ESPN+ has acquired the streaming rights to the Dutch league in the United States. On top of that, ESPN+ has also acquired the rights to the Australian A-League and Chinese Super League.

The fact that the Dutch league has finally found a home in the United States is big news. In previous seasons, the Eredivisie has been shown across Fox Soccer Channel, ESPN2, GolTV, ESPN3, NGSN, OZ.com and Univision Deportes in addition to not being available anywhere for a season or two.

Most of the Eredivisie matches on ESPN+ will feature games involving Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord.

About The Author

Publisher of World Soccer Talk, Christopher Harris founded the site in 2005. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian and several other publications. Plus he has made appearances on NPR, BBC World, CBC, BBC Five Live, talkSPORT and beIN SPORT.
Harris, who was born and raised in Wales, has lived in Florida since 1984, and supported Swansea City since 1979. Last but not least, he got engaged during half-time of a MLS game.

I just wish the app had a better design, be nice is each league had it’s own section so it would be easier to find with live league games, upcoming league games and replays all in the same area. And hopefully the price point stays for a long time!!!!

I think the price point has several years in it. Disney has been pretty open they’d like to get ESPN+ to scale in order to learn how to operate and market to at least 3-4 million homes as a pilot. What Disney really cares about is building a Netflix-killer streaming service built around their movies and TV properties, ESPN+ is the pilot program to make sure they know what they’re doing and work out the kinks so they can launch the big one without any hiccups.

I’d say that since they were giving away a good deal of this for nothing, the price point might stay around for a bit. They need to be careful as they are showing the more fringe leagues… yes, Serie A is a top league, but it is the only top league they have.

Which is quite shocking considering it is a great cup competition. Also did ESPN not pick up the TIM Cup in Italia along with Serie A ? I wish they would package that all together since a lot of these cup games are on the weekend or during the weekday.

While the Premiere League teams don’t go into the competition until January the first two rounds still provide interesting viewing. Last year the first round draw was on October 17 and the first round kicked off the first weekend in November. So it would be nice if this was resolved before then,

I think that would be a mistake for the seller (IMG I believe), once NBC and Fox have programming in place for those FA Cup windows the FA Cup rights would be almost guaranteed to go to streaming. Would be another feather in the cap for ESPN+ though.

Serie A was a great move by ESPN+ and these leagues just add to the draw! At first I thought ESPN+ a ridiculous scam to take more of my money……but with Comcast dropping BeIn last week, this now sounds like a bargain to be able to watch Serie A.

The only thing that ESPN+ is missing is to have highlights of matches and a 30 minutes recap of the weekend for each league. It’s like they’re buying the rights but not providing any additional value to them, a bit poor from them.